Technology and Innovation in Learning, Teaching and Education

This study focuses on the problem of the possibility of converting digital resources used by STEM teachers into epistemic tools (ET) to improve the quality of student learning and the role instrumental orchestration can play in this process. Lessons by two STEM teachers from the college teaching were analysed during a period of time in which digital resources (DRs) were used and at some point in the class, the students used these DRs as tools. These classes were described according to the protocol of Multimodal Narratives and are available in a public collection. The research question that is answered is: what instrumental orchestration did teachers use in their classes so that the use of DRs by students would make it possible to use them as an ET? The results show that (a) there are three modes of instrumental orchestration that influence students’ use of DRs as ET: time; teacher mediation; articulation between DRs; (b) the most decisive and predictor way of using DR as an ET is the mediation of the teacher (task type, students autonomy provided, epistemic moves and connection between DR and learning); (c) the mode time is decisive especially for the use of DR as ET to a high degree; (d) a more extensive articulation between DRs can favour the use of DR as ET. This article advances in two directions: 1) to characterize instrumental orchestration modes that are effective for using DR as ET; 2) to characterize (three) instrumental orchestration modes instead of instrumental orchestration types.

The use of Educational Software (ES) in education has become essential for teachers and students. On the one hand, the effectiveness of its use may facilitate the acquisition of learning and on the other hand, it may enable a better transmission of the contents. In this sense, it is necessary to provide teachers with tools that allow them to develop successful pedagogical actions with appealing and innovative resources, capable of stimulating creativity and motivating students for learning. The aim of this study is to ascertain the knowledge and the use by teachers of ES Kahoot, GeoGebra and Texas Ti-Nspire, in what type of content, activities and what is the impact of their use in the teaching of Geometry and Measurement (GM), whether in teaching practice of teachers, or in the learning of students. The adopted method has a qualitative nature, with characteristics of a case study. Fourteen teachers who teach Mathematics at various schools in Portugal participated. Two questionnaires and a challenge that consisted of the elaboration of tasks were used as instruments. Data analysis was performed using Excel (Office 2016) and content analysis of the answers given, and the tasks developed. The results suggest that of the three ES, Kahoot was the most unknown and was the most chosen by teachers to develop different GM content. The reasons are also described as to why these ES may cause an improvement in the teaching practices of teachers, as well as motivation and student learning.

This paper refers to a study that aims to understand the perceptions of pre-service teachers about the use of digital technology in outdoor mathematics. We followed a qualitative, interpretative approach and collected data through participant observation, questionnaires and photographic records. The participants were forty-eight pre-service teachers, that were enrolled in a Didactics of Mathematics unit course, and they used the MathCityMap app to do a math trail in the city of Viana do Castelo. Results show that they valued the experience, having the possibility to solve realistic problems, developing cooperative work, critical thinking and establishing mathematical connections. They found the app to be user friendly and motivating, mentioning its contribution for students’ engagement through active learning, spatial orientation, autonomy and being more interactive than the paper version. As for limitations, the participants highlighted the possible lack of access to Wi-Fi; the fact that students of younger ages normally do not have smartphones; and, in terms of the tasks, the limitation of the answer formats to either a value or multiple choice.

The article refers to an investigation into curricular integration (CI) strategies of computer simulations (CS), level of guidance and teacher mediation on the given tasks when using a CS, in the recognition and conceptual elaboration of the structure of the matter and alterations in the physical state at a microscopic level, in tasks with same degree of orientation and the perception of autonomy by students in the 5th grade. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used. Regarding curricular integration strategies, the class with the best results was the class in which the EXPLORA 1 strategy was applied. With regard to task guidance, the groups submitted to a moderate guidance degree were those who obtained the best learning results. In relations to mediation, the results of mediation are not independent of students’ learning and the perception that the student’ have about the autonomy and the time they have for the autonomous work. We conclude that autonomy with low guidance can be ineffective and the mediation with a lot of teacher intervention in the context of moderately guidance task can also reduce effectiveness.

Due to the confinement by Covid-19, teachers were forced to teach at a distance, which necessarily leads to a change in their teaching practices. Using Trouche’s theoretical instrumental orchestration framework, this case study shows that this framework continues to be valid in this type of teaching, it presents the similarities and differences found in these instrumental orchestrations in the case of distance learning, using a teacher’s teaching practice 12th year math class in the chapter on antiderivative and integral calculus. A new type of orchestration has been found.

The acronym STEM has been gaining prominence in discussions around the future of Education. With the growing importance of mathematics and technology in the STEM context, it is important that initial teacher education can respond to this challenge. Participation in STEM teaching experiences, which make an appropriate integration of technology, promote the development of professional teaching knowledge related to the TPACK dimensions and motivate pre - service teachers to adopt these teaching practices. We seek to contribute to this discussion with an intervention proposal, implemented during the practice component of pre-service teacher training, which combined Mathematical Modelling as a learning environment with the use of Virtual Manipulatives. A set of tasks supported by the TPACK conceptual model were designed to assist a group of 1st year elementary school to overcome difficulties detected in their learning related to elementary arithmetic operations. Through a qualitative research of interpretative nature and action research design, the analysis of the pre-service teacher performance identified the teaching practice characteristics that contributed to the creation of favourable conditions for self-regulation and co-regulation of students’ mathematical learning.

The dialogue between science education and literary education increases the interest of students and promotes the development of skills essential for the learning process. Despite its potential for fostering learning, this articulation - science and literature - is scarce in schools. In this context BiblioLab appears as a platform that intends to articulate these two areas of knowledge, fostering skills such as creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication. In this study we report the development of BiblioLab, a platform that offers Open Educational Resources (OER) developed through a design science research methodology to be used by teachers, parents and students. Students, parents and teachers were invited to use BiblioLab and to provide us feedback during the entire development process. Also, after exploring and completing one activity, teachers, parents and students were invited to complete a questionnaire and an interview. With this, we aim to understand how what we observed throughout this first phase of implementation supports the usability of the platform, and to detect the main difficulties and co-construct solutions to overcome these. Our results suggest that: students, teachers and parents have enjoyed using BiblioLab and consider that its platform and associated OER, achieve good levels of functionality and usability. The results also highlight the need to find additional solutions to foster autonomous and collaborative work in science and literary education (at distance) in primary schools.

The use of artefacts by mathematics teachers in their classroom while teaching practices can play an important role in the quality of teaching. The selection of these artefacts depends on the type of intervention carried out in an educational context and on the mathematical concepts to be worked on. The aim of this study is to understand how artefacts are orchestrated when interventions are made where math is done with music, as well as to understand how these artefacts become epistemic tools for students. Therefore, a case study was developed, with a class of the 7th grade, during an academic year, covering the areas of mathematics: numbers and operations; algebra and functions. The results suggest that it is possible to do mathematics with music, using artefacts orchestrated among themselves. They also suggest that the orchestrated artefacts allow to create a context in which the student's learning is active, where the artefact has the status of an epistemic tool.

This paper focuses on the problematic role of digital tools in STEM activities for Physics teaching. A group of 47 teachers of Physics and Chemistry, from middle and secondary education, attended a continuous professional development training course during the academic year 2019/2020 that aimed to promote the development, adaptation, and implementation of STEM activities, centered on various topics in Physics (sound, electricity, kinetic and potential energy, mass and weight, gravitational pendulum and free fall) in teachers’ practices. Most of the activities already had an integration proposal for digital tools. Results revealed that teachers’ options range from adding specific and unspecific tools to implement STEM activities. In most cases, they only replace other non-digital tools. This work contributes to foster the action and reflection related to teachers’ knowledge and experience to introduce digital tools productively, amplify their options, and explore other related areas.

The recent emergency remote teaching experiences caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have placed a forced attention on existing online pedagogical tools and intelligent ways of combining them to reinforce student presence in the learning environment. In higher education, where students’ autonomy is even more desired, the design of online learning experiences that focus on reflective thinking has always been a principal focus, due to the relation between reflection and self-regulated learning. This study focuses on a technically non-demanding way of combining two existing online tools and appropriating their use towards a two-fold pedagogical goal: (a) students’ creation and sharing of reflective narrations on their experience of a practice-oriented social science methods introductory course using JustPaste.it; and (b) their subsequent meta-reflection on these narrations using the course’s online Discussion Forum. The study highlights two main factors in the success of this combination, namely the importance of structuring guidelines and prompts for both reflection and meta-reflection to take place, and taking into account the age (average 17 years old) and multiple national backgrounds of the participants. An assessment rubric for students’ reflective and meta-reflective texts was also designed and tested as part of the study.

Critical thinking (CT) helps us to distinguish between good and bad arguments, to recognize information that has value from that which is essential, to find well-founded conclusions, to create alternatives, to improve communication and, finally, to have our own thinking and acting accordingly.Mathematics makes it possible to reinforce CT as it develops a constant search for truth through precise and exact techniques. Besides the active, collaborative and participative methodologies of learning, the uses of information and communication technologies enhance a set of advantages at the pedagogical level, namely the GeoGebra and Socrative at CT.The participants in this study were undergraduate students of Business Management and postgraduate students of Pre-service Teachers from two Portuguese public higher education institutions. The aim of the study is to investigate students in problem solving on sequences and geometry reasoning and the CT skills and dispositions (truth seeking, creativity, inquisitiveness) developed or not.Qualitative data findings have suggested that students exhibit CT skills and dispositions for arithmetic and geometric sequences. Another result, the study identified issues dealing with geometric constructions through a dynamic geometry system (DGS), they found it was easier to solve problems with “pencil and paper” instead of using DGS.

The importance of developing higher order skills in higher education students is a recommendation of several international organizations, so that they are able to respond to the challenges of 21st century society. The literature mentions several methodologies with these potentialities, including Cooperative Learning (CL), especially in presential learning environments. This study aims at comparing the effectiveness of CL in the development of Critical Thinking (CT) skills of higher education students in Portugal in two learning environments: face-to-face and distance learning. A quasi-experimental study was implemented, with pre and posttest, using the Critical and Creative Thinking Test (1.Revista Lusófona de Educação 44:173–189) with 32 students of the 3rd year of the Basic Education Program, distributed in two groups: 1) the presential group (academic year 2018/19) and 2) the distance learning group through synchronous sessions and virtual rooms in small groups (academic year 2019/20). The results show that there are no statistically significant differences in the total score of the Critical and Creative Thinking Test or with regard to the different skills assessed by the Critical and Creative Thinking Test: interpretation, analysis, explanation, evaluation, synthesis and creativity. In line with recent research, these results, to be confirmed at a larger scale, point out that CL is equally effective in promoting CT for students in face-to-face or in distance synchronous learning environments.

Distance learning at undergraduate level has not been applied in Greek Higher Education Institutions so far. However, during the quarantine period due to corona virus pandemic, distance learning by the use of online platforms was applied for the semester continuation. On this occasion, a mixed-methods research was conducted aiming at exploring students’ motivation, learning strategies and Critical Thinking skills. In particular, the research focused on students’ potential to develop their Critical Thinking skills in the context of the course “Teaching Methodology”, since due to distance learning they would have been offered the chance for student-centered instruction according to the push model of teaching. Slideshows, pictures conveying underlying messages, scenarios, case studies of unexpected events and search through various online and printed sources were used in order to promote Critical Thinking skills. Two questionnaires with close- and open-ended questions were administered to 45 participants regarding their opinions before and after the course completion. According to the results, participants seem to have developed particular CT skills while their answers offer further insights regarding the teaching process during distance learning.

The Diagnostic Assessment and Achievement of College Skills (DAACS) is an open-source diagnostic assessment tool that measures students’ college readiness and is designed to promote success through feedback and resources. Evidence for the validity and reliability of the four DAACS assessments (reading, writing, mathematics, and self-regulated learning) have been addressed, which further supports the use of DAACS with our targeted population. Empirical studies have shown that the DAACS improves the prediction accuracy of students’ performance, which allows DAACS to be used to identify at-risk students. Students who use DAACS feedback and resources are more successful than those who do not. Various behavioral nudges were sent to students as reminders to complete and use the DAACS, which resulted in a significant increase in the use of feedback and resources. DAACS is not just a tool but a system that facilitates the self and co-regulation of learning. Since the DACCS is now being implemented in new settings and contexts, further validation will be needed. The future of DAACS will involve expansion from use at the institutional level to the instructor level, where DAACS could be maximized to support students’ SRL development and academic achievement.

Online masters’ program chairs need up-to-date information to monitor efficiently and effectively all the courses in the program for which they are responsible.Learning Management Systems supporting the operation of the online programme collect vast amounts of data about the learning process. These systems are geared to support individual teachers and students, not program chairs.This article presents the process that led to the development of a Dashboards for program chairs, based upon an analysis of their regular supervision tasks, decision-making information needs, and available data in the learning management system, Moodle.The information presented via the dashboard is aggregated and contextualised for all students enrolled in the program, in all its courses, contributing to improve decision-making in program chairing.The dashboard prototype is presented as a concrete outcome of this process, which can be replicated to achieve more advanced and updated versions, hopefully contributing to better program chairing.

We used BPMN diagrams to identify indicators that can assist teachers in their intervention actions to support students' self-regulation and co-regulation in an asynchronous e-learning context. The use of BPMN modeling, by making explicit the tasks and procedures implicit in the intervention of the e-learning teacher, also exposed which data were available for developing decision-support indicators, as well as the relevant moments for carrying out interventions. Such indicators can help e-learning teachers focus their interventions to support self-regulation and co-regulation of learning, as well as enabling the creation of live data dashboards to support decision-making for those interventions, thus this process can contribute to devise better instruments for teacher intervention in support of self-regulation and co-regulation of student learning.

The COVID-19 crisis has caused an extreme situation for higher education institutions around the world, where exclusively virtual teaching and learning has become obligatory rather than an additional supporting feature. This has created opportunities to explore the potential and limitations of virtual learning formats. This paper presents four theses on virtual classroom teaching and learning that are discussed critically. We use existing theoretical insights extended by empirical evidence from a survey of more than 850 students on acceptance, expectations, and attitudes regarding the positive and negative aspects of virtual teaching. The survey responses were gathered from students at different universities during the first completely digital semester (Spring-Summer 2020) in Germany. We discuss similarities and differences between the subjects being studied and highlight the advantages and disadvantages of virtual teaching and learning. Against the background of existing theory and the gathered data, we emphasize the importance of social interaction, the combination of different learning formats, and thus context-sensitive hybrid learning as the learning form of the future.

Following Vygotsky’s seminal idea of semiotic mediation, the theoretical framework of Theory of Semiotic Mediation is used in this research to create and implement learning activities that can possibly allow future teachers to analyse semiotic potential of several technological artefacts, namely applets, identifying the knowledge and the mathematical procedures produced with their use. Because of the global pandemic, it was necessary and imperative to shift from in-person classes to online classes. In this line, new research’ challenges have been posed in educational environments. In this paper, an overall reflection is presented about how these challenges were faced as new opportunities for the understanding of pre-service teachers’ learning in this new reality.

In the beginning of 2020, the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has raised significant challenges for the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) worldwide. Due to Covid-19 outbreak, HEIs were forced to close due to social lockdown, placing online teaching-learning environments/modalities to the foreground of the educational settings. In an effort to examine how this ‘new normal’ has affected users’ Quality of Interaction (QoI) within the Learning Management System (LMS) Moodle, a modeling approach based on fuzzy logic (FuzzyQoI), was used here and applied to LMS Moodle data, drawn from an undergraduate discipline, offered by a public Greek HEI during the Covid-19 period. The results have shown the ability of the FuzzyQoI model to express the time-depended dynamics of the users’ QoI and associate it with the societal effects of Covid-19. Clearly, these findings shed light upon the way users interact with a LMS online learning when societal disruptors, such as Covid-19, come in to play, informing HEIs’ policy makers for monitoring and re-examining online (teaching-learning) practices.

The present article is about the academic partnership between the University of Campinas (Campinas, Brazil) and the Lusófona University (Lisbon, Portugal) for the adoption of a distance-learning methodology to students in the first year of Architecture and Urbanism at UNICAMP during COVID-19 lockdown. The contents from the online course “Drawing for Graphic Diary” were made available to UNICAMP students with minor adaptions.Three didactic practices were implemented to face the pandemic restrictions: 1) biweekly tasks to be done in the LusofonaX – Digital Academy LMS environment; 2) online advice to students to resolve doubts; 3) online synchronous classes with course teachers detailing the exercises and visual expressive modalities.The course design assessment was done through questionnaires that were carried out to students using Google Forms at two different moments: 1) before the course, to identify pre-existing skills and available knowledge about drawing concepts. For this, the authors depart from the following eight concepts as indicators of pre-existing competences for drawing: conic projection, two-dimensionality, surface, three-dimensionality, vanishing point, perspective construction, visual field and visual expression. After the course (2), to assess the perceived evolution of these same concepts through self-reported measures about the perceived knowledge acquired by students. Final student evaluation for the course was accessed with the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Results from the t-Tests and the NPS point to the success of the course methodology to deliver distance learning in the subject of design teaching compared to regular classes.

The Covid-19-induced closure of schools forced many instructors throughout the world to develop ways to deliver instruction online. Video-conferencing applications became one prominent tool for instructors to continue instruction. We report the perceptions of undergraduate mathematics students and preservice mathematics teachers who interacted in online “workshops.” In the online workshops, students worked on mathematics problems in small groups while preservice teachers supported their work. Two rounds of semi-structured interviews with both groups were conducted, wherein participants compared and contrasted their experiences with in-person and online group work. Analyses revealed three challenges with respect to online communication: (a) limited access to one another’s written mathematical work, (b) limited ability to have one-on-one conversations, and (c) the tendency for students to leave their cameras turned off during the workshops. In particular, we emphasize that the multimodal nature of mathematics requires extra attention to strategies for sharing symbolic, diagrammatic, gestural, and other non-verbal ways of communicating mathematics.

This paper explores student engagement in an undergraduate course during the pandemic-induced emergency remote teaching in the spring of 2020. Fifty preschool education students participated in a course in which synchronous video-conferencing was used. The design study that is outlined in this work focuses on the effect of an instructional approach on the rate and patterns of student engagement. The instructional approach involved questioning in multiple communication channels, chief among which was the chat. The findings indicate that despite the principled design, student engagement varied considerably. A small group of students were very active, systematically participating in the chat and answering all quizzes. Still, the large majority of students exhibited lower engagement rates as they reacted to a few posts on the chat and failed to participate in many of the quizzes assigned. Overall, the study results suggest that the patterns of student engagement identified in the study tend to approximate the ones that characterize face-to-face settings.

This study investigated the social presence, satisfaction and learning outcomes of undergraduate students based on their participation in an emergency remote online course entitled “Educational Programming Environments” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instruction was delivered using a student-centered design and discovery learning to teach computer programming problem solving. Data were collected from 39 students who did not undertake prior preparation for engaging in distance education. Social presence, learning outcomes and satisfaction towards the course were measured by previous well-established scales, respectively. The students’ learning outcomes were evaluated through their code development. At the end of the course, the students filled out an online questionnaire which measured these three variables. The results of this study showed that all three variables were evaluated as satisfactory by the students. The results also indicated that social presence and code development were positively associated with satisfaction. Moreover, the results of the regression analysis indicated that social presence and code development were critical factors affecting students’ satisfaction. Together, these two factors explain 39.9% of the variance of satisfaction. Social presence alone contributed about 32.3% of this variance, suggesting that it may be very important in predicting satisfaction. This study could prove useful to instructors in understanding which factors may influence the design and implementation of distance learning in higher education.

A literature review was conducted in order to study academic integrity in e-assessment. The research questions relate firstly to the prevalence of incidents that violate academic integrity and secondly to the countermeasures for addressing the challenges. In regard to prevalence, we found that e-cheating may not be as common as believed. In regard to countermeasures, we found that there are a lot of technical means to address the violations, but since technical countermeasures cannot fully ensure academic integrity, a long-term strategy should aim to redesign the learning process and to use alternative assessment methods.

During schools’ closure, due to the pandemic of COVID-19, teachers around the globe were forced to transfer their instruction on-line. They were facing a range of barriers and difficulties to plan and provide online remote teaching to their students. This paper reports on a study exploring Greek primary and secondary education teachers’ views about emergency remote teaching and e-learning. The survey conducted in May 2020, just after schools’ reopening in Greece. A total of 694 K-12 teachers responded to an online questionnaire. The preliminary findings of data analysis showed that the majority of the participants perceived the pandemic as a turning point with regards to the role of digital technologies and e-learning in the schools. On the other hand, we identified teachers’ needs for professional development and support, in terms of learning design abilities necessary to integrate synchronous and asynchronous learning in both, online and physical, classrooms.

The pandemic of COVID-19 forced K-12 schools worldwide to transfer their educational programs from in-person instruction to remote online teaching. Teachers faced a range of difficulties towards providing remote teaching and integrating e-learning tools in their practices. This paper reports on a study concerning the rapid design and implementation of a MOOC to support primary and secondary education teachers in Greece towards using online tools in their remote instruction during the pandemic of COVID-19. The design framework and the implementation procedure of this particular MOOC are presented. The preliminary findings of a survey concerning 171 teachers who responded to an online questionnaire after completing this MOOC, are also presented. The results revealed teachers’ satisfaction with regards to their personal outcomes and achievements, in terms of abilities to apply online instructional practices in their remote classrooms. The majority of the participants considered that this MOOC was an efficient environment to enhance their pedagogical knowledge and e-learning design skills necessary to provide remote instruction during the pandemic.

There is a growing interest in Open Educational Resources building up in the last decade. Among them Digital Learning Objects (DLOs) attract the interest of educational research and practice as there is evidence that they have a positive effect on learning. Especially in Science Education, DLOs are considered as important tools to support achieving high-level learning outcomes. Evaluation of DLOs is critical. A handful of tools are available, but they are too generic. There seems to be a lack of evaluation methods and tools specifically for Science Education DLOs. This work presents the SciLOET (Science Learning Objects Evaluation Tool), a DLOs’ evaluation tool specialized in Science Education. The tool is meant mainly to be used by teachers who are in the process of evaluating, selecting, and using DLOs in their teaching. It could also prove useful for education researchers who design empirical studies and instructional interventions with DLOs. The SciLOET evaluates four dimensions of DLOs, namely content quality, teaching effectiveness, design, and documentation. Each one of these dimensions, consists of a series of questions.

The rise of enthusiasts in Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL), benefiting from well-established benefits of consuming audiovisual content for autonomous learning, has risen during the last decade. Simultaneously, there is constant debate about how would an Online Collaborative Platform (OCP) has the potential to respond to the needs of teachers and learners, as well as change their audiovisual consumption habits when the latter is intended to improve their foreign language teaching and learning proficiency. Bearing this in mind, this chapter focuses on the content analysis of a Research-Development doctoral project, where a prototype of an OCP was developed and tested with teachers of English as Foreign Language (via a Think-a-loud Protocol) and learners of English for Specific Purposes. The oral and written feedback of the trials’ participants identified threats, and proposed improvements to the prototype’s conceptual nature and suggestions that the teachers believe will be useful for the operationalization of the platform. The feedback also shows that teachers would be interested in this platform, as they consider it fulfills a purpose for both teachers and learners, and it has value to add to the English for Specific Purposes/Business English teaching/learning community.

Although introducing social media in a Foreign Language classroom is nothing new in the academic world, studies regarding Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PFL) in fact has been insufficiently studied, particularly in the case of Chinese learners. We implemented two interventions with a duration of 14 weeks and the participation of 10 Chinese students in total by using a Chinese microblogging platform, Weibo. Although obtained some evident positive results from a test performed after the activities, the participants revealed in the interview some differences brought by this tool during the learning process might not even correspond effectively to their learning expectation due to the learning strategy usually applied in daily routine, which indicates some challenges existing in PFL teaching model reform in China and in the integration of these technologies in actual didactic practice based mainly on the passive memorization by students. Therefore, before applying social media in PFL classroom, it’s urgently necessary to help students to build awareness about a full-scale learning system of Portuguese language, which does not be confined solely to the memorization of vocabulary and grammar rules, and emphasize the importance of the social nature and communicative practicability of languages in real-life occasions.

Focusing on an Interdisciplinary Project (IP) involving Higher Education Institutions from Portugal (School of Hospitality and Tourism – Polytechnic Institute of Porto) and Romania (Faculty of Business – Babeş-Bolyai University), this short paper describes a joint project developed by tourism students attending tourism courses at both institutions. This project, which concentrated on the cities of Porto (Portugal) and Cluj-Napoca (Romania), involved different courses and set out to identify motivations, attitudes and perceptions of generation Z tourists, by collaboratively designing, applying and analyzing a joint questionnaire for each destination.Relying heavily on a technology-mediated, innovative approach that focuses on problem-solving, collaboration and communication skills, this paper draws on literature, field observation and informal feedback to give a general overview of the teaching and learning strategies used throughout the project and describe its implementation. Based on these premises, and taking into account the challenges currently being faced by HEI and the need to further enhance students’ learning experience and promote an articulated development of skills that meet the needs of an increasingly digital workplace, this project provides a practical framework for other initiatives within this scope, thus making a viable and constructive contribution towards educational innovation, particularly in the field of tourism education.

Teaching English at the university level often focuses on the professional areas, i.e. English for Specific Purposes (ESP). The focal point of ESP is the language that is specific to a particular domain and is full of context-bound lexical units used in the classroom environment to operate certain curricular concepts. Nevertheless, based on numerous evidence scholars have come to a conclusion that receptive skills (listening and reading) and productive skills (writing and speaking) are mastered unevenly in ESP courses. Occasionally students cannot be provided with enough opportunities to start a conversation in the classroom environment. Collaborative learning supported by technology may seem like a solution that improves communication and interaction among students. Classroom interaction has impact on the social, academic and cognitive development of students. Engagement in group activities allows students to practice content-specific language in a meaningful context. Through deliberations and discussions, students have the opportunity to express the key concepts in different words that they all understand thus making their study process easier. Learners also link the newly received linguistic knowledge with the knowledge they have already acquired. Group work that involves discussions improve cognitive processes through challenging and thought-provoking exchange of thoughts and ideas. Learners need to respond immediately, formulate their thoughts and ideas. Moreover, group discussions contribute to greater motivation due to similarity to real life situations in which opinions are formed and shared. In terms of group dynamics, learners concentrate on interaction with their peers, develop social skills (such as expressing opinions, active listening, encouraging, etc.) that also has positive effect on their interaction with the teacher. In summary, teachers can greatly enhance learners’ competencies in the ESP classroom by applying Technology-Supported Collaborative Learning (TSCL).

As the continuous development of digital technologies continues to have a profound impact on educational contexts (including teacher education settings), it has become paramount to not only understand whether and how teacher education and training is keeping pace with the ubiquitous nature of digital technology, but also to contribute to the continuous development of competences and initiatives within this scope.Focusing on language teaching and learning, this paper aims to support teachers and teacher educators working in technology-laden environments by putting together a broad ranging annotated list of digital platforms and tools that can be used to augment and support online activities and collaboration and promote articulated, technology-enhanced teaching and learning activities. Emphasizing the role played by Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) and drawing from recent trends and an extensive review resulting from a collaboration that involved teacher educators, researchers and practitioners, these tools are described taking into account current approaches to language learning and assessment, as well as their perceived applicability, effectiveness and shortcomings. Highlighting the importance of collaboration, this work is effective in providing practical examples and best practices, whose potential can be harnessed and ultimately replicated by other practitioners and teachers in training, thus contributing the ongoing momentum of practice-driven innovation, that could ultimately inform language learning and teaching policies.

This paper articulates an innovative systems dynamics model of learning based on a predictive cognitive architecture by interrelating six modules: knowledge, affect, cognition, performance, external agents, and context. To test aspects of this model, this paper focuses on cognitive load theory predicting that a manipulation of the learning task can affect at least one of the three types of load (intrinsic, germane and extraneous). More precisely, agency is hypothesized to affect either the intrinsic or extraneous load. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to explore the effect of agency on cognitive load. Thirty-six dyads (1 player and 1 watcher) played a serious game for learning physics for 120 min while dual-EEG was recorded for all participants. Results of time series analysis show that agency (being a player or a watcher) as no effect on the overall cognitive load when the comparison is made either by group (all players versus all watchers), or within a single dyad. Moreover, nor did agency affect instantaneous cognitive load for a vast majority of dyads. Indeed, only four dyads exhibited one or two significant cross-correlations. However, those exceptional cases cannot be generalized. Finer-grained analyses are proposed in the discussion to better explore the role of agency on cognitive load in further research.

It is generally assumed that making the learner active leads to better learning although this improvement has not be firmly quantified experimentally. The goal of this paper is to test the effect of agency in cooperative learning and to explore methodological strategies as well as theoretical and applied implications of agency in the study of cooperative learning, in this case with data on arousal. Results from 27 dyads (1 player and 1 watcher) who played a serious game for learning physics for 120 min show that agency has no effect on the overall quantity of arousal, but that the arousal of a watcher and player is synchronized. A watcher’s arousal may precede or be delayed from the player’s. The results point to refinements for the use of multimodal data in process-oriented studies of cooperative learning.

In the competitive automotive market, where extremely high-quality standards must be ensured independently of the growing product and manufacturing complexity brought by customization, reliable and precise detection of any non-conformities before the vehicle leaves the assembly line is paramount. In this paper we propose a wearable solution to aid quality control workers in the detection, visualization and relay of any non-conformities, while also reducing known performance issues such as skill gaps and fatigue, and improving training methods. We also explore how the reliability, precision and validity tests of the visualization module of our framework were performed, guaranteeing a 0% chance occurrence of undesired non-conformities in the following usability tests and training simulator.

The dropout of university students has been a factor of concern for educational institutions, affecting various aspects such as the institution’s reputation and funding and rankings. For this reason, it is essential to identify which students are at risk . In this study, algorithms based on decision trees and random forests are proposed to solve these problems using real data from 331 students from the University of Trásos-Montes and Alto Douro. In this work with these learning algorithms together with the training strategies , we managed to obtain an 89% forecast of students who may abandon their studies based on the evaluations of both semesters related to the first year and personal data.

Visualization can be defined as a technique that allows us to obtain the perception of an object/event in a clear and consistent way. The use of visualization in education is a key factor to explain complex information in a clear way. Therefore, it is essential to have tools capable of visualizing various types of data. An example of a data type is the weather forecast data, which includes various atmospheric data for a given place, and allows the simulation of the atmospheric evolution. It is used for decision making in many areas, such as, agriculture, fishing, tourism, etc. Thus, it is beneficial to demonstrate the usefulness of this type of visualization to better understand the meteorological phenomena, as well as to teach scientific visualization techniques in order to enable access to information that otherwise can only be interpreted by qualified people. In this article it will be discussed the scientific visualization and its benefits to the area of meteorology, and it will be presented a case study of data visualization using the ParaView tools for meteorological data visualization and analysis. ParaView is a multiplatform tool based on the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) that provides features to process, analyze, and visualize various types of data. This study aims to present a tool for scientific visualization and to demonstrate its applications and usefulness for education.

Programming is considered by many a core skill of the 21st century. Learning the fundamentals of coding or programming encourages children to acquire new skills, such as problem solving, logical thinking, critical thinking, and Computational Thinking (CT), and moreover to be active creators of tomorrow. There are various platforms for learning coding and programming, and in particular game-based ones, which, through the gamification process, focus on increasing learners’ motivation and engagement. Most existing games are nowadays distributed through web platforms or mobile applications. Most suffer from major drawbacks, which make them difficult to use in a classroom environment, and there lack of an administrative platform does not allow the educator to assign tasks to students when at home. This paper proposes the design of an educational platform for teaching programming to primary school children. It has been designed and is to be developed on the CMX framework. The educational platform includes a web-based game for in classroom teaching, a mobile application game for outside of the classroom, and an administrative module for the teacher to organize the educational process and monitor pupils’ performance. Through specific learning analytics the instructor will be able to draw conclusions on whether the students achieved the specific learning objectives, as well as understanding the educational impact that these types of games actually have on students.

In the coming years teachers are going to use robots as learning tools in education because of their beneficial outcome in children’s practical and cognitive skills even in special education. Apart from using social educational robots as a tool, teachers are expected to collaborate with them in many ways, even as a peer teacher in the learning procedure and get involved into the robots’ design process. Although those procedures are progressive, in many cases, teachers cannot provide very useful feedback because they do not have prior experience with robots operating within the target environment. Therefore, it is important to identify the best way to accurately identify the teachers’ needs. In this paper, we introduce the idea of actively involve the future teachers in the design process by having them watching a robot performing the target task. Our target is to find the ideal robot-tutor characteristics from the teachers’ perspective in order to collaborate with it and we compare the future teachers’ opinions about the ideal characteristics (Appearance, Intelligence, Emotional Expression etc.), when they are actually taught by a social robot and when they are taught by a human tutor. Participants had statistically significant different opinions about the robot’s characteristics after each class, such as their preference for machinery robots after the human-class which is non-existent after the robot-class. Our results clearly suggest that teachers as robots’ future users should interact with a similar robot performing the target task, in order to be able to accurately select the target robot characteristics.

In this paper we present and discuss the creative process behind a hybrid game, grounded in the research project “FlavourGame”. The research project is developing a serious game for kids aged 10–12 years old to generate discussion and sense-making around nutrition, more specifically everyday choices of nourishment and food. The main aim is to develop a game design model for hybrid games, making use of digital and physical interactions with fictional worlds to create engaging experiences. In this paper we unravel the creation process of the game narrative, game board, cards and characters while enunciating the mechanics and rules needed to play the game. Additionally, we describe the implementation of the game, the used technological approach, and challenges faced by combining the digital and analog components.

This paper presents an action research study aiming to motivate undergraduate students to develop their computer programming learning skills, particularly within the transition from beginner to proficient level. The SimProgramming motivational approach is presented as a didactic proposal for this context. From the results of this iterative research process, we concluded that SimProgramming is a promising tool for teaching computer programming skills in intermediate classes, with potential to be used and/or applied in other educational contexts.

Augmented Reality (AR) is a field of knowledge that emerged in the middle of the last century, and its use has been spreading because of its usefulness, but also because of mobile platforms, accessible to most users. AR characteristics are valued in several fields of human activity, and also in the field of Education and Training, being AR pointed out as useful to the learning process. In this paper we search and analyse surveys and reviews of AR. We present a AR’s definition, and we create a classification scheme of two dimensions for AR: the dimension of the fields of application of AR, and the dimension of the technologies of AR.